I'm actually willing to pay more for an ebook than a physical version of a book as the ebook is more conveniant and my preferred format.

Same for me if I really want a book. I prefer ebook and I avoid pbook at any cost.
I keep on changing countries and shifting and I always used to pay the most of the overweight in air travel for the books. That has changed a lot now and airlines don't earn from me as they used to So, for me, long-term, even more expensive ebook is saving of money and space.
Plus I get to carry as many books for my holidays and choose then and there

Same for me if I really want a book. I prefer ebook and I avoid pbook at any cost.
I keep on changing countries and shifting and I always used to pay the most of the overweight in air travel for the books. That has changed a lot now and airlines don't earn from me as they used to So, for me, long-term, even more expensive ebook is saving of money and space.
Plus I get to carry as many books for my holidays and choose then and there

I agree totally. I no longer by a physical book only ebooks. I have also bought many authors I would not have tried when their books are cheap. I will pay according to how badly I want to read the book right away. For example 12 of Never by James Patterson is 14.99 right now. If I want to read it right away I will pay that or I will wait for it to come out in pbook and go down in price if I am not in a hurry to read it.

I was just looking up a book and the ebook price was $11...but it has a new HARDCOVER for $7 (fulfilled by amazon)

I might be willing to pay $7 for a book...maybe...but it is not one of those collectable author's/series that is worth my valuable wall space. I am certainly not going to pay $11 for it....so....another lost sale. Sucks for the author because I usually enjoy her books.

I was just looking up a book and the ebook price was $11...but it has a new HARDCOVER for $7 (fulfilled by amazon)

I might be willing to pay $7 for a book...maybe...but it is not one of those collectable author's/series that is worth my valuable wall space. I am certainly not going to pay $11 for it....so....another lost sale. Sucks for the author because I usually enjoy her books.

Just curious, but was it Amazon pricing both or was the eBook priced by the publisher? I've seen discrepancies like that when the hardcover is a remaindered copy, but not normally.

so....another lost sale. Sucks for the author because I usually enjoy her books.

It could very well come down in price, and you might buy it then. It's not a lost sale until the item is undesirable at any price.

I often wait for prices to come down, I have a huge wishlist on ereaderiq for that very reason. I buy a couple of ebooks every week based on emails from ereaderiq that the price has dropped into my purchase range.

Ah but the candy bar has to travel through the physical world before you purchase it as well. It goes from the factory, to a warehouse, to another warehouse, to the store where you buy it. Ebooks can go directly from publisher (especially if self-published) to the buying public. Plus the publisher doesn't have to worry about losing money spent on paper & ink if they offer the book either free or at a reduced price during a sale. If it costs 30 cents to make a candy bar and the bar normally costs 45 cents to buy the candy maker makes 15 cents profit. If they offered a sale that had that candy bar only costing the buyer 20 cents then the candy maker would lose 25 cents rather than making 15 cents profit. Ebooks cost less to produce than pbooks I'd think because it's just a matter of formatting and spell checking one copy that is copied each time someone buys that particular title. There is no additional cost in printing new copies, no cost in buying paper or ink. No additional cost in storage for the multiple copies before the bookstores purchase them or cost in gas or other fuel in transporting those copies from the warehouse. It's all electronic.

That's all about costs. I don't care what it costs to make I only care whether the end result is something I want and I measure how much I want it by how much I'm willing to spend.

If someone can offer the same, or similar, item for less then obviously I'll go for the cheaper option - all other things being equal. That's where costs come in to it. But unless I am going into business myself they are only indirectly of interest to me.

The ebook price was for the kindle version, I assume that was amazon price.

The hardcover was fulfilled by amazon, I assumed that is also amazon's price.

I didn't see anything stating that the price had been set by the publisher, only that it was being sold WITHOUT DRM at the request of the publisher.

If it had that tag about DRM I assume it was a TOR book? In that case it's not agency priced, but $7 for a HC sounds like a remaindered book. I don't think we'll ever see any kind of pricing match to limited quantity closeout type situations.

Regarding the whole ebook vs. reader thought (not just this comment) and where the value lies:

In the end, without some sort of reader to read the file on, isn't the ebook valueless? So, does that mean ebooks should cost nothing and readers be much, much more expensive?

I don't think so, but that seems to be where this thought leads.

No I don't think it follows. The fact is that you need both an ereader and an ebook together to be an alternative to a paper book. So your argument goes both ways - an ebook is without value without a reader but a reader is without value without an ebook. By that logic maybe the reader should be free.

Of course there are both free ebooks and free readers (in the form of reading apps). So there are a range of ways the cost of reader+ebook could play out. But I don't think that's really relevant to my argument because in the end it comes down to a choice:

Do I want to buy a) this ebook or b) this paper book? Assuming it's the same book (which is reasonable) and assuming I've got some kind of reader (or I wouldn't be considering the ebook as an option) then the ebook offers me certain features for this particular text by virtue of being an ebook. So again, whether I choose to pay the asking price comes down to whether I think those features have enough value to justify it.

I don't particularly care about DRM as long as I can read a book on all of my devices, what I care about is content! Secondarily to that I care about having that content available wherever I am, and the ability to store it without filling my house with bookcases.

As such, I don't buy pbooks unless that content is not available in any other form, and then only after much thought about need (desire) for the content as opposed to the bulk of paper and inconvenience inherent in that bulk. So it is really immaterial to me what a hard cover or paperback costs, only what the value of the content is.

I'm not exactly sure, but I thought that it means that it comes from amazon's warehouse...don't know how all that works.
Yes, new Hardcover.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

If it had that tag about DRM I assume it was a TOR book? In that case it's not agency priced, but $7 for a HC sounds like a remaindered book. I don't think we'll ever see any kind of pricing match to limited quantity closeout type situations.

Yes, TOR. That may be possible that it is a remaindered, but it was published in Feb 2013 so it would be surprising.

I would think that Amazon, or any retailer, would have a policy that an ebook would never be priced more than the paper version. They should also have the computer algorithm to prevent it from happening.

It seems an ebook would never cost more to produce than a pbook, so the cost of the actual printing/distribution should be removed from the cost of the pbook to determine ebook pricing.

Quote:

eg
a hardcover costs $5 to print and distribute.
a paperback of the same book costs $3.50 to print and distribute

the retail price for the hardcover is $15
the retail price for the paperback is $9.95

The price of the ebook should be the lesser of the two prices minus costs:
hardcover: $15 - $5 = $10
paperback: $9.95 - $3.50 = $6.45
ebook = $6.45

I would also give a price break if the publisher insists on including DRM...I mean, I should get compensated for the work I have to do to remove the DRM, right?!?!

ebook with DRM: $6.45 - $5 = $1.45

That would still allow everyone that actually has something to do with producing the book to get paid for what they do. The author, editor, publisher gets paid for all the books sold. The printer and distribution network would get paid for the books they print and distribute. The costumer is happy because they pay a fair price for the product they choose to purchase.